Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush

by William Martin

“Otherwise?” said Peter.

  “Otherwise”—Barber rattled the ice in his glass—“the estate cannot liquidate. This house and its amazing contents cannot be sold. The proceeds cannot go to the charities selected by Maryanne Rogers.”

  “And the second Gold Rush cannot start,” said Sarah Bliss. “That’s what you’re really after, isn’t it, Barber? A mythical river of gold up there somewhere in the Sierra foothills.”

  Barber rolled his eyes and took a sip of bourbon. “I am just doing my job.”

  Sarah Bliss grabbed her backpack and headed for the door. “Come and visit me over in Sausalito, folks. We live on a houseboat. We call it the Tree Hugger.”

  “The Tree Hugger,” said Barber. “She calls her boat the Tree Hugger. Is it any wonder she’s such a pain in the ass?”

  * * *

  CHINATOWN. IN SOME CITIES, an afterthought … but in San Francisco, the center that held, right on the flank of Nob Hill.

  After the 1906 fire burned the city to charcoal, they tried to push the Chinese out and grab the real estate. But the Chinese would have none of it. The enclave they had built in those first wild years—when white men sought the favors of Chinese courtesans or the muscle of Chinese laborers—that Chinatown was the place where Asian roots sank deepest in America. From there, the Chinese had gone forth to become part of the national story. And nothing, not the 1906 disaster, not the eternal greed of white men who coveted those streets, not the thuggery of Chinese tongs who fought to control the neighborhood, none of it could move the people off their turf.

  Peter and Evangeline arrived at the Hunan Garden House on Washington Street a few minutes ahead of LJ and his fiancée.

  A classic Chinatown dining palace. Foo lions flanked the front door. A big aquarium—featuring the fish featured on the menu—separated the reception desk from a high-volume dining room with big booths along the sides and two rows of tables in the middle. Chinese prints in red lacquered frames covered the walls. Painted screens covered the service areas. White cloths covered the tables and deadened the sound.

  “Lots of tourists.” Peter slid into the booth. “But lots of Asians, too.”

  Evangeline glanced at the menu: Chinese characters, a little English. “Good odds for a good meal, especially if one of those Asians is your future daughter-in-law.”

  LJ and his girlfriend were arriving now.

  Her name was Mary Ching Cutler. Chinese on her mother’s side, Anglo on her father’s, with slender height inherited no doubt from Dad, long black hair and almond-shaped eyes from Mom, a confident gait that was all twenty-first-century American girl.

  Evangeline whispered, “Nice-looking couple.”

  Peter had decided to let the afternoon business simmer. Meeting Mary was more important. So it was hugs and chitchat and a welcome from Howard Ching, Mary’s cousin and owner of the Hunan. Then came a chef’s choice banquet of pork belly dumplings, sizzling rice soup, lobster steamed in ginger scallion sauce, Hong Kong dry-cooked shrimp, lamb chops in hoisin, garlic green beans. And with every course, they drank Tsingtao beer and small talked and got to know each other.

  The flight from Boston?

  A little bumpy, but we had an extra seat.…

  The weather in Boston?

  Hot for October. Nice to be back in the blowing fog again.

  And how did you two meet, exactly?

  At AT&T Park. Interleague play, Red Sox against the Giants. LJ wore his “hanging Sox” Boston cap, Mary her Giants cap. They came with friends. They left with each other, each wearing the other’s cap. Very cute.

  “Opposites attract,” said Peter, especially since Mary had nothing to do with the law. She was a budding fashion designer.

  “It shows.” Evangeline admired her blue silk jacket decorated with gold Chinese characters, set off with a white silk blouse and black slacks.

  Mary said that she had started her own mail-order house, a small operation that had taken off after some good online reviews.

  Yes, they were living together … in an apartment on Jackson, in the same block as the Cable Car Museum, in one of those San Francisco sweet spots where you could walk a few blocks downhill for a good meal in Chinatown or climb a few blocks up for a fancy night at the Top of the Mark. A big apartment, LJ boasted, with an option to buy. Two bedrooms, Mary added. One for sleeping, the other for an office, LJ’s desk on one side, Mary’s design table on the other. And …

  … conversation went so well that it was pay-the-bill time before Evangeline asked Mary about her father.

  As Peter snatched the check, Mary said, “My father is in the gold business. A geologist. Cutler Gold Exploration.”

  Peter raised his head from calculating the tip. “Gold business?”

  Evangeline saw the look that Peter shot at his son. She said, “Pay the bill, Peter.”

  He gave it another glance. “They didn’t charge for the drinks.”

  “A courtesy,” said Mary. “Cousin Ching always buys drinks for family guests.”

  “But make sure you tip for them,” Evangeline said.

  “Of course I’ll tip for them.” Peter went back to calculating. “Sometimes, it’s like we really are married.”

  “You’re too much of a loner.” Evangeline looked at the kids. “He’s too much of a loner.”

  “And you’re too much of a wanderer,” said Peter.

  “So we won’t be settling down anytime soon,” added Evangeline.

  Mary gave LJ the corner of her eye, as if she wasn’t quite certain what to make of this. LJ gave her just the slightest shake of the head, as if he had seen it all before.

  Peter signed the check and asked Mary, “Where does your father live?”

  “Placerville, the crossroads of the Mother Lode country.”

  Then Peter asked LJ, “Have you told him about this journal? This Spencer project that’s supposed to trigger a new gold rush?”

  “Jack Cutler knew about it before I did.”

  “Oh?” Peter searched for a word. Interesting? Too bland. Suspicious? Too … suspicious, for the moment.

  LJ nudged Mary to take over.

  She explained, “There was a woman named Ah-Toy, who arrived in 1849 from China as the concubine of an American sea captain. She made a lot of money satisfying the needs of the Gold Rushers, including an Irishman named Michael Flynn.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Peter. “Flynn’s the Irishman in the journal. This is getting very—”

  LJ said, “Just listen, Dad.” And he nodded for Mary to keep talking.

  She said, “Ah-Toy lived to be a hundred. She died in 1928. My great-grandmother took care of her at the end. Ah-Toy would talk of her customers, including the Irishman. She liked him because he liked to talk. And he talked about ‘the Chinese gold of Broke Neck, the first trickle from the lost river of gold.’”

  “What’s Broke Neck?” said Evangeline.

  “An old Gold Rush camp,” said LJ.

  “And your father is looking there for the Chinese gold?” asked Peter.

  “He’s a geologist, so he’s always looking,” answered Mary.

  “This Chinese gold,” said Evangeline. “Is it a real river or a big bag of it?”

  LJ looked from Peter to Evangeline, as if gauging how much to tell. “Either one … or both. That’s what the journal might tell us. That’s what the ‘second Gold Rush’ means.”

  Peter said, “So my son finds himself at the end of not one but two streams of historical memory about the Gold Rush, and they both seem to be leading to the same place. Why didn’t you tell me all this before I flew out?”

  “It sounds a little coincidental, I know, but you’re always looking for the connections, Dad, the bridges, the things that tie us to history. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “It sounds like you’re courting conflict of interest, too.”

  Evangeline noticed that Mary was blushing. Uncomfortable conversations should be conducted away from the eyes of strangers or cousins who ran restaura
nts. She elbowed Peter, “We ladies need some fresh air.”

  * * *

  OUTSIDE, EVANGELINE WENT TO work changing the subject. She said she wanted to see Chinatown through Mary’s eyes and find a new angle to write about.

  So Mary led them down Washington Street toward Portsmouth Square.

  But Peter took LJ’s elbow and stopped in front of a Chinese market. Dead chickens hung in the window, above trays of spices, roots, and crinkled brown mushrooms. Peter said, “You have some explaining to do.”

  “There’s a lot going on, Dad. Just go with the flow.”

  “Are you planning to give your future father-in-law inside info if we find this journal about some dead Irishman’s river-of-gold tall tales?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “Challenge, Dad, not trouble. And like you always say, challenge means opportunity. I can’t say more. So just do what I ask, okay? That’ll be a big help.”

  Peter tightened his grip on LJ’s elbow. “Somebody called my hotel today and told me to be careful crossing streets. Who would be doing that?”

  “There’s an old joke, Dad, where they ask you a question and you say, ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you.’”

  “Old joke,” said Peter, “seldom funny.”

  “But sometimes appropriate. We’re all on a ‘need to know’ basis here.”

  “What kind of trouble are you in?”

  “There are dangerous people in this town.” LJ looked at the girls, who were half a block ahead, chatting away. “Maybe you and Evangeline should go back to Boston.”

  “Not happenin’. Not now.”

  “Dad.”

  “You asked me to come out here and help you. So I’ve come. Evangeline, too. She even got an assignment. But she really came because she likes you.”

  “I like her.” LJ pulled away and started walking down Washington Street. “But it was a mistake to get you involved.”

  “Well, mistakes happen.” Peter went after LJ, grabbed him again by the arm, turned him around, studied those eyes, and saw that look again, the one that said the kid was protecting something deep down—a hurt, maybe, or a disappointment, or a dark secret. It was plain that LJ didn’t want to say, “Dad, I fucked up” or “Dad, I let the schoolyard bully push me around.” It was also plain that he wanted help, but on his own terms. So Peter decided to be a dad, which meant supporting his kid, no matter what.

  He said, “Mistakes happen, son, and I am involved. I’m not going back to Boston. I’m not leaving you out to dry. I’ll help you find these seven installments. Just promise me you’ll tell me what I need to know when I need to know it and that you’ll be careful.”

  “You be careful, too.”

  * * *

  THEN THEY HURRIED TO catch up to the girls.

  At the corner of Washington Street, Mary stopped and made a sweeping gesture: “They call this Chinatown’s Living Room. Portsmouth Square, cradle of San Francisco.”

  A wide, paved plaza opened before them. Traffic grumbled on the surrounding streets where tourists studied menus in restaurant windows. Locals trundled along with shopping bags and little kids in tow. And just down the hill loomed the worst and the best of American architecture: the postmodern neo-brutalist tower of the San Francisco Hilton and the gloriously futuristic fancy of the Transamerica Pyramid.

  All across the plaza, on the benches, beneath the big red pagoda-style gate, under the little trees and the lantern-shaped streetlamps, groups of Chinese—mostly men—talked, smoked, played chess, dealt cards, did business, sometimes in the open and sometimes in the deeper shadows where things always looked a little suspicious.

  Mary gave her group of Anglos a quick history as they crossed:

  Here, in 1846, a U.S. Navy captain named Montgomery, commanding the Portsmouth, rowed ashore, marched up the hill to the ramshackle quadrangle of wood and adobe, and raised the American flag to claim the whole peninsula from Mexico.

  Here, on a May day in 1848, a Mormon merchant named Sam Brannan started the worldwide insanity when he held up a jar of yellow dust and shouted, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” But Brannan didn’t care about the gold. He sold picks and shovels and meant to sell a lot more of them once he got everyone headed for the diggings.

  Here, the entertainers and gamblers and “soiled doves” went to work in 1849. Here, on an October afternoon in 1850, Californians celebrated statehood, achieved more quickly than any territory before or since. Here the Vigilantes hanged their first victim in 1851, and San Franciscans built their first city hall, first school, and first post office.

  The Chinese who settled on the surrounding blocks had adopted Portsmouth Square back when it was a gently sloping greensward. Now an underground parking garage accommodated the tourists and commuters. The locals got restrooms, trees, shrubberies, a pretty playground, and a nice bricked footbridge over Kearny Street to the Chinese Cultural Center in the Hilton.

  By the time Mary was done, they were halfway across the square, and most people were paying them no mind at all. But wherever he went, Peter tried to tune himself to whatever frequency was vibrating in the air, and he noticed eyes cast in their direction. An indifferent gaze, a sidelong glance, an outright glare. An old guy on a bench never took his eyes off them.

  Maybe they looked like some kind of high-end walking tour, since the girl doing the talking was Chinese. But tourists didn’t spend much time in Portsmouth Square at night. Maybe that’s why people were watching.

  The only other non-Asian that Peter noticed was a woman in black sweats, ball cap, and pricey shades. She had jogged into the square from Washington Street right after them, went past, and … shades at night … odd.

  Then that old guy on the bench was getting up, coming toward them, in and out of shadows, past a table of mah-jongg players, past two old women arguing in Chinese. He was wearing the basic uniform of the Chinatown elder—sneakers, khakis, windbreaker, plaid shirt. And he was moving with purpose, maybe even anger.

  “Hey! Mary Ching Cutler!” The old man pointed his finger.

  Other people looked up from their games and conversations.

  Two young guys got up from a bench. One was tall, all in black, with long hair down the back of his neck like a mullet. The other was big all over and wore a traditional Chinese mandarin hat pushed down over his wraparound sunglasses. Young guys watching their turf, oozing attitude.

  The old man said, “I told you don’t come around no more. Where you father?”

  LJ grabbed Mary by the elbow and said, “We have to go.”

  They tried to step around the old man but he got in front of them and called to a group playing chess under a streetlamp. “Mary Ching Cutler. Her father Jack Cutler. He cheat me. He cheat you. He cheat everyone!”

  “He never cheated anyone, Uncle Charlie,” said Mary.

  “Let’s just go,” said LJ, “straight into the Hilton.” He pointed to the footbridge beyond the big red gate with the pagoda roof.

  Peter said, “I don’t want to be caught on a footbridge.”

  “Caught?” said Evangeline. “No one is catching me.”

  “There’s Tong Boys all around,” said LJ. “Like the guy with the mullet over there. If they want to catch you, you’ll be caught.”

  A few more old-timers were getting up, coming toward them. Others were gawking.

  “You father promise us gold!” said Uncle Charlie.

  Mary said, “You invested and lost. It’s like gambling.”

  “We’re sorry, Uncle Charlie. We really are,” said LJ. Then he whispered to Mary, “I thought he went back to Hong Kong.”

  But Uncle Charlie was right there. LJ tried to move around him, but Uncle Charlie kept blocking the way, saying, “I no got money go Hong Kong. I broke ’cause of Jack Cutler. Me and half the peoples in Chinatown. So you and your friends, go. Go. Get out.”

  Peter put his hand out to hold off the old man and pushed Evang
eline forward.

  Uncle Charlie looked at the hand as if it had struck him. “You no touch. No touch!”

  “I’d be careful, mister.” Mullet Man sauntered up. “Uncle Charlie knows kung fu.”

  “Get lost,” said Mary to Mullet Man. She wasn’t backing down.

  LJ tried to push everyone toward the footbridge, with the growing crowd of Chinese following him.

  Then Mullet Man stepped in front of them. “Hey, these people are pissed. They want some talk. So”—he folded his arms as if this were the last word on the matter—“you stay and talk … or pay to leave.”

  “I’m a tourist.” Peter stepped around Mullet Man. “I don’t owe them anything.”

  The guy in the wraparounds joined in. “My pal wants you to talk to the people who been screwed by Jack Cutler.”

  “If they read the prospectus,” said Mary, “they knew what they were getting into.”

  Uncle Charlie shouted, “Tell them go. Tell them get out Chinatown.”

  Wraparound looked at LJ. “What about it, big boy. You gonna run?”

  “No” Evangeline pulled out a can of Mace and pointed it at the sunglasses. “We’re gonna walk, right out of this square.”

  Wraparound said, “Whoa, lady. We’re bein’ friendly here. Or we were.”

  “I’m friendly, too,” she said, pushing past as Peter, Mary, and LJ quick-stepped after her.

  They were halfway over the footbridge, with the traffic on Kearney roaring beneath them, when another Chinese guy got up from a concrete bench and blocked their way. He wasn’t too big, but his slick black suit, black shirt, black tie, and dark sunglasses announced that he was the biggest man in Chinatown, or thought he was.

  Mary stopped, then the others did, and the crowd caught up.

  But this guy gave a little gesture with his walking stick and jerked his head to Mullet Man—get them out of here—and the whole crowd began to retreat. Uncle Charlie stood a moment longer, then even he backed off.

  This guy said to Mary, “You pretty stupid, comin’ down here ten o’clock at night.”

  “It’s my neighborhood, too. I live three blocks up the street.”

  “Not your neighborhood no more, not after your father get all your relatives to go for bad gold stock. You think they know better. But they stupid, and he cheat them.”